speaker:

Vincent Courcelle-Labrousse, Defence Counsel at the ICTR and Special Tribunal for Lebanon

You are cordially invited to the Magdalen College Trinity Term Libraries & Archives Talk:
Liam Dolan, Sherardian Professor of Botany, will speak on early botany.

A talk in Magdalen Summer Common Room (Cloisters III) followed by a chance to see our Early Botanical Books exhibition in the Old Library.

Speaker: Tom Price

The archipelago of Japan is defined as one of the World’s 34 biodiversity hotspots. Learn how staff from the Botanic Garden and Harcourt Arboretum are conducting expeditions to Japan to collect and document the native flora to improve the plant collections held by the University, promote biodiversity conservation and communicate research conducted by the Department of Plant Sciences, Oxford to a wider audience.

All Summer Lectures start at 6.30pm in the Daubeny Lecture Theatre (at
 the front of the Botanic Garden) and are followed by a drinks reception in the Botanic Garden. Ticket cost £8 per talk or £36 for the series of 5.
For more details, visit: http://www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk/whatson

Rheumatoid arthritis is a complex autoimmune disease affecting up to 1% of the population, causing a disabling inflammatory arthritis. The disease has two clinical similar subsets: autoantibody positive or seropositive disease, and autoantibody or seronegative disease. Recent advances in high-throughout SNP genotyping has resulted in the identification of >100 risk loci, in addition to well-known associations at the MHC. However, understanding the link between genetic loci and disease mechanism, is contingent on investigators identifying causal alleles and elucidating how they function to modify disease susceptibility. Furthermore, the mechanistic relationship between the seropositive and seronegative rheumatoid arthritis clinical subsets is still unclear. We are now just starting to make progress in this direction. Here we present recent work on (1) efforts to localize MHC effects to functional amino acid sites within HLA genes, (2) methodological advances to connect non-MHC loci to functional alleles that influence gene regulation in a cell-specific manner, and (3) how genetics is giving us a clear picture on the heterogeneity of the genetic bases of the two clinically similar conditions of seronegative and seropositive rheumatoid arthritis.

Know the value of beetle legs? Aware of the worth of red feathers? Familiar with tea bricks? Join us to explore the world of global currencies and trade and how different cultures have responded to the common problem of finding efficient ways to assign value and facilitate exchange.
We’ll be joined by special guests, author Clara Semple, who’ll be introducing the Story of the Maria Theresa Taler, and Dr Shailendra Bhandare (Ashmolean Museum) with a handling collection of unusual coins.

Al Jazeera host Mehdi Hasan will challenge Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of Medecins sans Frontieres and former French Foreign Minister, on France’s military interventionism. Are the country’s motives altruistic or do they respond to a neo-colonialist agenda? And is there a tipping point when intervening becomes essential? Syria, Mali, Libya, Kosovo and more.

This debate will be filmed and aired on Al Jazeera English at a later date. Audience members will be invited to participate in a Q&A section during the second half of the conversation.

Order free tickets here: http://bernardkouchner.eventbrite.co.uk

RANDY RETTBERG, President of iGEM
Randy Rettberg is the man behind iGEM, the global competition for undergraduates and high school students in designing brand new biological parts, or “genetically engineered machines”. An engineer by trade he is the President of the iGEM Foundation, which operates the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, a continuously growing library of genetic parts that can be mixed and matched to enable easier construction of synthetic biology devices.

Dr. RICHARD KELWICK, Researcher at CSynBI, Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation (Imperial College)
Richard has been scientific advisor and project manager of three successful iGEM teams, 2011-2013. Most recently, he was the lead advisor for the iGEM team Plasticity, at Imperial College London, which came third out of over 200 teams at the world final, held at MIT.

Dr. JAREK BRYK, National Centre for Biotechnology Education University of Reading
Jarek works at the National Centre for Biotechnology Education on a project to facilitate teaching of synthetic biology on an undergraduate level. He develops experimental kits that will be incorporated in synthetic biology curricula.He currently mentors the iGEM Reading team.

The use of GM technologies is growing beyond agricultural crops. GM vaccines and GM animals are available and their use may need different regulatory considerations. In this talk, Dr Michael Bonsall from the Dept of Zoology, University of Oxford, will cover some of the scientific, policy and regulatory issues that challenge the use and implementation of GM organisms.

Speaker: Guy Horwood

In 2013, Harcourt Arboretum arborist Guy Horwood was awarded a travel bursary
to join the prestigious International Dendrology Society on their study tour of the Czech Republic. The tour of this diverse and unspoilt country started and ended in Prague and visited botanic gardens and natural forests. In this talk, Guy will take you on a virtual version of the tour and share his experiences with you.

All Summer Lectures start at 6.30pm in the Daubeny Lecture Theatre (at
 the front of the Botanic Garden) and are followed by a drinks reception in the Botanic Garden. Ticket cost £8 per talk or £36 for the series of 5.
For more details, visit: http://www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk/whatson

All cancers are caused by somatic mutations. However, the processes underlying the genesis of somatic mutations in human cancer are remarkably poorly understood. Recent large-scale cancer genome sequencing initiatives have provided us with new insights into these mutational processes through the mutational signatures they leave on the cancer genome. In this talk I will review the mutational signatures found across cancer and consider the underlying mutational processes that have been operative.

A new report by the Humanitarian Innovation Project, Refugee Economies: Rethinking Popular Assumptions, will be launched to coincide with World Refugee Day, on Friday 20 June 2014. It is one of the very first studies on the economic life of refugees and fundamentally challenges existing models of refugee assistance.

The report is based on participatory, mixed methods research including about 1,600 surveys in Uganda, one of the few refugee-hosting countries in Africa that allows refugees the right to work and freedom of movement. However, it has wider implications for the emerging refugee crises around the world.

Far from being uniformly dependent, refugees are part of complex and vibrant economic systems. They are often entrepreneurial and, if given the opportunity, can help themselves and their communities, as well as contributing to the host economy. The data in the new report challenges five popular myths about refugees’ economic lives:

that refugees are economically isolated;
that they are a burden on host states;
that they are economically homogenous;
that they are technologically illiterate;
that they are dependent on humanitarian assistance.

Read more about the report: http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/refugeeeconomies

Oxford Transitional Justice Research is pleased to invite you to its 2014 Summer Conference ‘Borders and Boundaries in Transitional Justice’.

This year’s conference, hosted with the support of the Planethood Foundation, Law Faculty, and the Centre for Criminology, will explore the issue of how borders and boundaries affect transitional justice processes across the world. The conference is organised around four panels:

The interplay between local, regional, and foreign transnational processes;
The role of diaspora and stateless communities in transitional justice;
The ways in which international law is dealing with cross-border transitional justice concerns; and
How local, national, and global approaches are affecting the theory and practice of transitional justice.

Registration is now open and we encourage all potential participants to register as soon as possible. Spaces are limited. We particularly welcome graduate students and early career researchers working on issues of transitional justice. A small registration fee includes tea and coffee and a light lunch.

In 2014 Barnett House is celebrating its centenary. The celebrations culminate with the Reunion Weekend on 12-13 July 2014.

This includes:
– Keynote talk from Magdalena Sepulveda, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.
– The 100th birthday tea party (the V-C Andrew Hamilton will cut the birthday cake!)
– A talk on the history of Barnett House and the launch of the book on the history.
– Open house at the department with displays of historic material and current research.
– Drinks and dinner with an after dinner talk from Prof Jonathan Bradshaw.
– Showing of the film Rich Man, Poor Man based on research carried out by Robert Walker and Elaine Chase with a discussion with the director of the film.

The World Humanist Congress is taking place from Friday 8th August until Sunday 10th August in Oxford. Held every three years in different locations around the world, this years theme of the meeting is ‘Freedom of Thought and Expression’. We are pleased to announce during the conference period, 10 world-class speakers will be visiting the bookshop for a series of free 20 minute talks taking place in the Norrington Room. You do not need tickets to attend any of the talks but seating is limited, so please arrive early to get a ensure your place.

Friday 8th August- Richard Dawkins will be discussing “The Greatest Show on Earth”.

Simon Singh will be discussing ‘Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial’.

The World Humanist Congress is taking place from Friday 8th August until Sunday 10th August in Oxford. Held every three years in different locations around the world, this years theme of the meeting is ‘Freedom of Thought and Expression’. We are pleased to announce during the conference period, 10 world-class speakers will be visiting the bookshop for a series of free 20 minute talks taking place in the Norrington Room. You do not need tickets to attend any of the talks but seating is limited, so please arrive early to get a ensure your place.

Sue Bolton and Fiona Ruck, smoking cessation specialists, look at the effects of passive smoking and their campaign for smoke-free homes and cars across Oxfordshire.

The talk will include myth-busting statistics and facts covering the effects of passive smoking on both adults and children, as well as a detailed look into what is in the cigarette smoke that is causing the adverse effects. Sue and Fiona will also look at local and national responses to this public health issue, including the Smoke Free Homes and Cars Pledge project.

Our speakers have worked as registered nurses and health visitors and worked for years in smoking cessation, including as a smoking and pregnancy specialist and as a smoking and young person’s specialist for Oxford Smoking Advice Service.

The Prime Minister wants to defeat dementia by 2025 and says: “Dementia now stands alongside cancer as one of the greatest enemies of humanity.” It affects over 800,000 people in Britain, at huge cost to the UK economy and at a huge personal price to the families and carers of those affected.

We have ideas about how dementia could be tackled in terms of management and treatment: including better drug delivery to the brain, improving early detection methods and providing an environment in which dementia patients can live safely and at relative peace.

But there are still more questions than answers in terms of the speed of research, care provision and the ethical debate around early diagnosis.

Join experts from the Medical Research Council and Oxford Dementia and Ageing Research (OxDARE) in an open and enlightening discussion on how we can defeat dementia: or at least manage it in light of new early detection methods. Defeating Dementia will be hosted by writer and broadcaster Quentin Cooper.

Now that you’re over the age of 10 asking ‘silly’ questions about dinosaurs may feel well… a little silly! So we’re offering you the opportunity to ask anything and everything you ever wanted to know about dinosaurs but were too afraid to ask. Need to keep up with your Dino-obsessed son or daughter or just fascinated by all things prehistoric, this is your chance to find everything you need to know. From the simple to the complex; from the strange to the straightforward, come and put your questions to Oxford’s Dr Roger Benson who will be leading this talk on all things Dinosaur.

From the struggle to get up on a Monday morning to coping with jet-lag, the body has to carefully balance our need to be alert or to be at rest. But how does the
brain control this? How much sleep do we really need? Join us to hear Dr Peter Oliver discuss some of the facts and myths surrounding sleep; highlighting new research in this area as well as the role of genetics in the control of circadian rhythms. Plus, why do flamingos sleep on one leg??? Come along and find out!
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Egyptomania: The Allure of Ancient Egypt
With Henrietta McCall, Department of the Middle East, British Museum

2pm Saturday, 11 October 2014 at Ashmolean Museum | Venue Information

Henrietta McCall talks about the enduring appeal of ancient Egypt in western culture. She assesses how it began with Napoleon in the early 19th century; how symbols and imagery from antiquity inspired architecture, gardens, furniture and fashion; and how in the 1920s that appeal reached its climax with the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.

‘Tutankhamun and Co. Ltd’: Arthur Weigall and the Discovery of Tutankhamun’s Tomb

With Julie Hankey, author of ‘A Passion for Egypt: Arthur Weigall, Tutankhamun and the Curse of the Pharaohs’

Ashmolean Lecture Theatre

Tue 14 Oct, 2.30‒3.30pm

From 1905 to 1912, Arthur Weigall was Howard Carter’s successor as Chief Inspector of Antiquities for Upper Egypt. He used his position to conduct a campaign against government practice of allowing amateur collectors to excavate for private profit. With Tutankhamun’s discovery, Weigall came into open conflict with Carter’s patron, Lord Carnarvon, over his exclusive contract with The Times, and ‒ at a time of political unrest in Egypt ‒ over his assumption of rights to the contents of the tomb.

Michaelmas Term 2014 Seminar Series
‘FERTILITY, REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT’
Thursdays – 12:30 – 14:00
Seminar Room, Oxford Institute of Population Ageing,
66 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PR.
Convener: Dr Melanie Frost

The Jerash and Decapolis Cities
With Linda Farrar, historian and archaeologist

Ashmolean Lecture Theatre

Thurs 16 Oct, 2–4pm (inc. tea & cake),

Today, the ancient Greco-Roman Decapolis region straddles the countries of Jordan, Israel and Syria. This lecture explores the distinct characteristics of the cities of Jerash, Gedara, Pella and Philidelphian (Aman) and tells the stories of each cities unique role in the development of this historic region.

Professor Peter Piot, Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; Professor of Global Health; and Commissioner on the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations, will provide his perspective on the key long-term challenges in global health, addressing the burden of both communicable and non-communicable disease.

This seminar will be followed by a drinks reception, all welcome.

Join in on twitter with #c21health

This seminar will be live webcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEwlBU7bNrA

About the speaker:
Professor Peter Piot is the Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a Professor of Global Health. Professor Piot is also a Commissioner on the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations. In 2009-2010 he was the Director of the Institute for Global Health at Imperial College for Science, Technology and Medicine, London. He was the founding Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1995 until 2008, and was an Associate Director of the Global Programme on AIDS of WHO. Under his leadership UNAIDS became the chief advocate for worldwide action against AIDS, also spear heading UN reform by bringing together 10 UN system organizations.

Professor Piot has a medical degree from the University of Ghent (1974) and a PhD in Microbiology from the University of Antwerp (1980). In 1976 he co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire while working at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium. He was a professor of microbiology, and of public health at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, the Free University of Brussels, and the University of Nairobi, was a Senior Fellow at the University of Washington, a Scholar in Residence at the Ford Foundation, and a Senior Fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He held the chair 2009/2010 “Knowledge against poverty” at the College de France in Paris, and is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and was elected a foreign member of the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academy of Sciences, and is also an elected member of the Académie Nationale de Médicine of France, and of the Royal Academy of Medicine of his native Belgium, and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

He was knighted as a baron in 1995 and has published over 550 scientific articles and 16 books, including his memior No Time to Lose. In 2013 he was the laureate of the Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize for Medical Research and in 2014 he received the Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health.

Discuss the clinal and ethical implications of the 100,000 Genomes Project
An evening event organised by the Progress Educational Trust (PET) in partnership with Genomics England. The event is free to attend, but advance booking is required – please email Sandy Starr at sstarr@progress.org.uk and he will add you to the attendee list. If tweeting about this event, please use the hashtag #100KGP
The 100,000 Genomes Project aims to sequence 100,000 whole genomes from around 75,000 participants by 2017. The project is recruiting NHS patients with common cancers, plus NHS patients with rare diseases and their families. Participation is voluntary, with participants giving informed consent for their whole genomes to be sequenced.
Sir John Chisholm – Chair of Genomics England, the company established by the Government to carry out the project – says that ‘participating patients will have the opportunity to benefit from clinical insights derived from the sequencing of their genome’. But what are these benefits and insights?
Participants will receive feedback from their clinician about their genome sequence, but it is by no means guaranteed that they will receive improved care. Many participants will not receive a diagnosis, but taking part in this project may provide their only hope. With UK Prime Minister David Cameron saying ‘I believe we will be able to transform how devastating diseases are diagnosed and treated in the NHS and across the world’, is there a danger that people will have unrealistic expectations? Could this create an unethical inducement to take part?
The 100,000 Genomes Project is both a research project and a healthcare initiative. This gives the project unprecedented scope to link genetic data with treatment outcomes, but also poses a number of challenges. One such challenge is how best to deal with incidental findings – genomic discoveries with implications for the participant’s health, that are not pertinent to the condition that led to participation in the first place. Who should decide what is fed back to the participant?
The project is currently in its pilot stage, but as it ramps up to capacity, these and other important issues must be addressed. This event will explore what the 100,000 Genomes Project has to offer patients, and what patients have to offer the 100,000 Genomes Project. It will give you an opportunity to put questions and comments to Sir John Chisholm and others involved in the project, and to hear a range of contrasting views on the ethical and practical issues raised.

Prof Peter Visscher, Professor and Chair of Quantitative Genetics, Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland

Driven by advances in genome technologies, the last 7 years have witnessed a revolution in our understanding of complex trait variation in human populations. Results from genome-wide association studies and whole-genome exome studies have shown that the mutational target in the genome for most traits appears to be very large, such that many genes are involved in explaining genetic variation. Genetic architecture, the joint distribution of the effect size and frequency of variants that segregate in the population, is becoming clearer and differs between traits. I will show new results from disparate complex traits including height, schizophrenia, motor neurone disease and gene methylation, to illustrate polygenicity and the power of experimental sample size.

“Everywhere the Glint of Gold”: Colourising Tutankhamun’s Tomb
With Liam McNamara, Ashmolean Keeper for Ancient Egypt and Sudan and co-curator of ‘Discovering Tutankhamun’ exhibition

Ashmolean Lecture Theatre

Sat 18 Oct, 2‒3pm

Howard Carter’s evocative description of the ‘wonderful things’ he saw upon entering Tutankhamun’s tomb continues to capture the public’s imagination. The excavation of the tomb and its contents were documented in black and white photographs taken by Harry Burton. This talk explores the various methods by which the excavators – and their successors – sought to ‘colourise’ the contents of the king’s tomb, from 20th-century gouache paintings on ivory, to the latest in 21st-century digital imaging techniques.

Speaker: Lina Molokotos-Liederman (Uppsala University)
The first part of the seminar will look at the Orthodox Christian approach of addressing social issues of poverty, injustice and inequality, and the concept of Orthodox diakonia. The second part will focus on Greece as a case study, discussing the response of the Church to the social costs of the economic crisis (its charitable social welfare activities), but also the impact of this crisis on the Church itself.

As the dust settles after the Scottish referendum and the UK gears up for the next general election, the Oxford Martin School and the Department of Politics and International Relations bring constitutional experts together to debate what next for the United Kingdom?

Panel:

Professor Iain McLean, Professor of Politics, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford and specialist in devolution
Dr Scot Peterson, Bingham Research Fellow in Constitutional Studies and Junior Research Fellow in the Social Sciences, University of Oxford
Chair: Mure Dickie, Financial Times Scotland Correspondent

There will be a drinks reception after the debate, all welcome

About the speakers

Professor Iain McLean was born in Edinburgh and went to school there. He came to England for the first time as a student at Oxford where he obtained his MA, M.Phil and D.Phil. He was a college tutor in an undergraduate college for 13 years, during which the college scaled the heights of PPE. He has worked at the Universities of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Warwick, and Oxford, and has held visiting professorships at Washington & Lee, Stanford, Yale, and the Australian National University.

He has been an elected councillor on Tyne & Wear County Council (committee chair) and Oxford City Council (group leader). In recent years he has principally worked on UK public policy, and started the Department of Politics and International Relations Public Policy Unit in 2005.

His research areas and insterests are:

Public policy, especially UK. Specialisms in devolution; spatial issues in taxation and public expenditure; electoral systems; constitutional reform; church and state.
The Union (of the United Kingdom) since 1707. Rational-choice approaches to political history
Dr Scot Peterson primarily in Colorado, in the United States, where he did his undergraduate work in Political Science and Philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He earned a Master of Arts degree from the University of Chicago in Political Science, and attended law school at the University of California (Boalt Hall) in Berkeley. After practicing law for fifteen years in Colorado he came to Oxford, where he earned his doctoral degree.

He is interested in the constitutional history of the United Kingdom and of the United States, focusing particularly on matters arising from the relationship between church and state. His D.Phil. thesis was about the religious establishments, or the lack of them, in the three nations that make up Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland) in the early twentieth century. He is concerned with questions of why those relationships have been maintained in recent history, despite the supposed ‘secularization’ inherent in modern Western democracies. He analyzes them as political and historical phenomena, engaging in archive research and applying rational choice methodology.